New Generator Technology Can Produce Clean Energy

Mainspring Energy’s device is a new way to create clean electricity, and it can run on hydrogen.

Two generators thrumming in a cramped Silicon Valley parking lot represent a clean power technology so new that most potential customers don’t know it exists. For Adam Simpson and his startup, Mainspring Energy Inc., that’s both a curse and an opportunity.

Inside the generators, steel cylinders wrapped with magnets race back and forth through copper coils 12 times per second, generating electricity. There’s fuel involved, but no combustion: Nothing burns. The generators’ fast, muffled drumming—about as loud as traffic on the Bayfront Expressway a few yards away—makes them sound like engines, but they aren’t.